Impact of climate change on static ratings of overhead line in Edinburgh

Static rating is the most widely used overhead line rating strategy to plan the operation of the overhead transmission system. Usually, the static rating of an overhead line is set with conservation assumptions of the most unfavorable weather condition based on the historical weather records. However, the climate change brings the uncertainties in both the level and frequency of these unfavorable weather conditions. This paper proposed a probability based approach to study the impact of climate change on the static ratings of the overhead lines. Through the thermal model developed based on IEEE Std 738, the static ratings are determined under the future climate conditions in Edinburgh simulated from UKCP09 weather generator with the climate change assumption in IPCC SRES A1FI. The results indicate an average reduction of 6.94% and a maximum reduction of 17.4% in the pre-fault static rating of the Zebra ACSR conductor in the summer of 2080s. It is also found out that the novel Drake ACCR conductor with a high rated operating temperature can be used as a potential solution to mitigate the impact against climate change.